What about Weather? || D&D with Dael Kingsmill
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 เม.ย. 2022
- Welcome to MonarchsFactory! On this channel you can find videos covering Dungeons and Dragons, mythology, games, ridiculous fun with friends; all kinds of stuff. Today's video tried to break my spirit, but we got there in the end.
Here's that link I mentioned:
open.spotify.com/show/5EW3iIt...
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i think matt colville once said “mysterious fog is redundant. all fog in D&D is mysterious. it’s never just foggy, it’s never just a pool of water, it’s never just a full moon.”
Ye i had realized that my cave of plants didn't make sense without water, so I on the fly added a small, almost puddle of the water. Became the focus for like 30 minutes as they tried to figure out what was special about it xD
yeah it’s a chekhov’s gun thing. you don’t bring stuff like that up unless it’s important
One of my favorite uses of rain in a session was when the party was arriving at a PC's home for the first time. This village worshipped The Storm Lord. The last couple days of travel had been rainy, and they arrived to find the village looking like a ghost town. The guards recognized PC, smiled, and told him he better not miss it - pointing them further in. Everyone in the village had gathered for a Ceremony anointing a new leader to the Elder Council. Lightning strikes the sword of a half-orc woman in the center of the crowd, and the flash illuminates her face, revealing the PC's daughter.
Wow that was an epic read. I love the utility of weather and how it relates to the story.
Love it. But there's a huge missed opportunity here: What additional types of weather might exist in a magical setting? Magical static fog? Poison spore clouds? April showers that literally bring instant flowers?
Good question. I'm sure there's a quote somewhere by a wise person about imagination being unlimited. However, the beauty that many find in fantasy is its connection to reality. For example, the deep truths conveyed by LOTR are enough to provoke many to tears. But the purely imaginative worlds with unique aliens might be interesting at best. One can only revel for a short time in the unfamiliar, but true joy comes with humble marvel at profound truth greater than ourselves.
Sorry... Thus, I would stick with creative weather only as an allegory, such as an exaggerated version of something connected to practicioners of a realistic "magic" system.
Something I read once, was how subversive weather can be used, a character was talking about it being a nice warm day, when she found the devil came to her school, and this is often used in other media as well,
The idea of using the weather to lower tension, people playing at the beach in the low tide before the tsunami, or when your watching a slasher, the casual suburb before all hell breaks loose. Even something like the end of Seven works quite well under this, the mild open sun filled plain in sharp contrast to the horror of the final reveal.
I'm from Ohio, so rolling on a random weather table and basing weather on reality are one in the same.
I'm in this comment and I don't like it
Missouri is the same. It snowed yesterday (mid-April). If that’s not a random table roll, I don’t know what is. 😂
Same with Virginia.
Here’s my pitch to people not from Virginia:
Do you like the four seasons? Virginia
Do you want to have all four seasons each season? Virginia.
Do you want variety in each season i.e. snowing and sunny? Virginia
Come to Virginia, where you can have a major earthquake, a blizzard, a windstorm, a hurricane, and a tornado watch in the same week (2011).
As someone from Midwest US I feel this very much
For real though! Kentucky is bad too, like the tornado this past winter lol.
Four ways I will use weather in my upcoming sessions:
1. Heat: The heroes will fight their way through a kobold dungeon. The deeper they advance the hotter is gets. Because at the bottom of the dungeon is a sleeping red dragon radiating heat.
2. Fog: The heroes will track down a necromancer who is raising an army of undead for the goblin queen. I feel like fog is always a great combination with undead. The undead will one by one appear out of the fog.
3. Rain: The heroes will lead their army into battle against the goblin army. Stealing this straight from the battle of the hornburg.
4. Snow: After the heroes defeated the goblin queen in her lair and come back to the surface it will start snowing, marking the beginning of winter and the end of the adventure.
Thanks Dael for the inspiring video.
This makes 'Control Weather' more interesting if it's used by an NPC. Great way to portray the character's mental state without them even being present. Anger and resentment could be a heatwave for example. A whirling thunderstorm is mania or madnesss.
I never thought about that, but that’s awesome. I’m totally going to steal that!
You just gave me an idea for a short campaign:
Premise: Blessed/Chosen character (probably a child growing up in some kind of monastery) controls the weather by its mood but has a rather capricious temper.
Hook: Shortly one such outbreak caused torrential rain/flooding that may have destroyed part of its village/killed people.
Quest: Accompany the child on a pilgrimage to [place] where an artifact is supposed to help it control it's powers. [this may be anything from a fake bauble, to an opium den or even an outright lobotomy]
Catch: The child always pretends to be fine so as not to be scolded, represses its feeling etc. Only if the PCs interact with the child in a way that it dares to open up can the quest get a 'good' ending. If they are harassing, lecturing and threatening it, they might suffer direct consequence from its moods or ultimately fail the quest.[I think that last point might need some work]
Powerful angels have control weather and this is absolutely how all sad bad angel trope characters should be played.
Interesting that the 4 categories line up with the Greek table of elements.
Any resemblance to actual elements, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Does that make "Cold" equivalent to Earth? The other three map pretty neatly but that one seems off somehow.
@@digitaljanus
Cold: Water, Earth
Hot: Air, Fire
Wet: Air, Water
Dry: Earth, Fire
3 DAEL VIDEOS IN A MONTH? we are truly blessed by the universe this day. dael is truly a stream to her folks!
4:44 Do they refer to the tornado as a hurricane in the film? I was under the impression that a hurricane was an ocean-based tropical storm, which would be somewhat unusual in landlocked Kansas.
Oh, and I just remembered another type of weather. Magical weather ...not in the sense of magically controlled or summoned, but weather with storms which rain hailstones made of magical force, or a swirling tornado that (like Wizard of Oz) pulls people into another plane. Or magical lightning that does actually target living creatures regardless of the height of surrounding terrain. I've never used this myself, but I think I just might add it into my current campaign!
I love that you mentioned a thunderstorm during the final battle with Strahd! Its really easy to decide what to do with weather in that campaign because its literally controlled by Strahd, so it always matches *his* mood, and changes as quickly. Its virtually always raining, or at least misty enough to block the sun, but when the PCs do something to piss him off, the lightning and torrential downpour are immediate.
I'm just hyped af for DMing Curse of Strahd and trying to portray well how terrifying a Vampire Lord who could control the weather can be haha
Guess who's back
Back again
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Tell a friend
I've always kind of picked a season for every arc of the campaign, I love your take on this!
That’s really awesome. One of the Pokémon games did this as well and it’s super cool detail. Works great for tone.
I've always focused on season and then wrapped it into the mechanics of the feywild in my long term campaign.
One disaster I'll add to the list of possibilities: in mountainous terrain, landslides tend to go with rain. There's complex engineering reasons for this, which I'll cover in the last couple paragraphs, but trust me, I'm an engineer and the son of a soil scientist. I grew up learning about landslides.
Mechanically, I'd make them like avalanches, but more. Because fundamentally that's what they are: avalanches, but instead of ice powder its dirt and whatever used to be on the dirt up on the hill where that dirt came from. And often big boulders embedded in the dirt too.
IRL, a landslide is not something you assume to be survivable - if you've got the ability to dig things up and check, you do so, because sometimes people get damned lucky, but...google pictures of landslides (or track down one of the handful of videos, it's very hard to get good footage of landslides because they're hard to predict and you generally want to be leaving if you have predicted one). You really expect someone caught in that to be alive???
But D&D isn't simulationist in most games, people can survive things that they wouldn't IRL and do so on a regular basis. But...scale it such that it's close enough to scare the players. I'd probably say you want to get the lower health folks into death saves, but that might be a bit too aggressive. You can also avoid hitting some members of the party. Landslides, like avalanches, happen in fairly specific areas, and unlike avalanches, landslides are often one-and-done so odds are you won't have an obvious scar where all the trees have been ripped up by repeated slides. And unless you have a player who's playing as a soil scientist, they will have no reason to know why the landslide bordered where it did. (Even with modern science, they're not 100% predictable - there's a lot of variables at play that are very hard to measure.) Anything normally considered solid (structures, trees, etc, is almost certainly going to become part of the landslide as well.
If you want to spice things up, there's also reason to have random texture differences within a landslide. Where avalanches are pretty much just a massive wave, but snow, landslides have stuff in them. Trees getting shredded, their logs becoming giant clubs or spears, rocks either embedded in the soil or torn up from the bedrock by the slide. I've seen pictures of houses caught at the edges of landslides with logs stabbing through holes in the outer wall like some giant had used them as a javelin. All of these could do different types or amounts of damage, and you could set up a roll table to see who gets hit with what. (Or pretend that's what you're doing and having something worse happen to the party's tank since they have twice as much HP as the rest of the party combined.)
And that's it for my ideas, so here's the science behind landslides being a rain thing: Soil has a property called cohesion, which determines how well it holds together. Depending on its exact physical properties, sometimes when it's dry it becomes a really fine dust that kicks up when you step on it or a hard, brittle mass that cracks if you try to pull it apart. This is usually pretty weak but, given most of the world goes through dry cycles, any landslides that happen from this will have a few years of material at most, not the centuries of material needed for a true landslide. (Or it just never gets that dry.) Add a bit of water, and you start to see cohesion, the water gives it just enough ability to move around to fit together well. If you've worked with modeling clay, that's exactly what this principle is, you just had soil from a clay deposit that maximizes this effect. Add too much water, though, and it starts to get looser, becomes mushy, thus creating mud. At this point, there's so much water that the particles of soil are no longer actually touching each other, they're all surrounded by water, which lets them slip freely past each other. Add more water and that lubrication effect becomes more and more pronounced, until eventually you just have dirty water.
For a landslide, the way engineers model it (and the easiest way to imagine the physics of it) is a rotational slide, which presumes the landslide operates like a rotating circle, with soil at the top driving the rotation and soil at the bottom resisting it. (Google "rotational slide" and image search should give you a few example diagrams.) The mass at the top of the rotational area is governed by gravity, pulling it down in what's called the driving force. Meanwhile, the soil at the bottom effectively creates a friction force known as the resisting force. This is effected by a number of properties - a bunch of things that remain constant like mass, how cohesive that particular soil is, and so on, and one big thing that varies: how much water there is between particles of soil. As I described before, this lets the soil particles just flow past each other without touching, at which point there's pretty much no resisting force at all. You tend not to see things go quite this far on a large scale - it takes a lot of water to reach this state (called super-saturation - saturation is where all the existing gaps in soil are filled with water; supersaturation is when there's so much water that it's squeezing the soil out of the way.) But if you're on a slope, at some point along the way, you reach a point when all that soil up top - all that driving force - can't be held back by the material at the bottom holding together - the resisting force - and you get a landslide.
In the calculations, it's a nice even rotation - a chunk of soil rotates out of the hill and drops on top of the ground down-slope. But that's because the calculations are a nice, simple physics abstraction - in reality it's a nightmarish torrent of what probably feels like liquid soil filled with madly thrashing pieces of tree, rock, and whatever else is unfortunate enough to be in its way.
I think that it's worth mentioning how inhospitable the cold is. It's not always dramatic but there's a really unique character to it, like it's not aggressively trying to kill you but there's so little care about you that it kills through neglect
I've seen "Weather Hex Flowers" that are a way to randomize weather events in a more realistic pattern, I've not had the chance to use it yet, but it I like what it represents. I think the main takeaway from all this, though, is that Colville didn't get the right kind of sausage roll.
Im not crying. It's just been raining..
On my face.
-Jermaine Clement, Flight of the conchords
I always liked the idea that when rolling on a table for weather something incongruent (Blizzard in a desert, etc.) would be ignored or explained by being a clash between deities or other high-level NPCs that could affect the local weather system.
I like the Hex Flower Goblin's Henchman designed for weather. Love how each weather links to the next and there's a higher probability of calmer weather
A strong wind stirs the leaf litter into menacing swirls across the forest floor, carrying with it the smell of woodsmoke and warm filled pastry from a nearby village. The branches of the trees shiver and rustle in a disconcerting way, it carries a barely recognisable voice that seems to whisper "Matt is wronnggggggggggg" :)
So very wrong
One session idea I think would be cool is if the players are wanted fugitives in the middle of a massive city. Under normal circumstances the guards would be out and actively looking for them but there's a massive hurricane and flash flooding which, despite making the city an extreme challenge to traverse, is providing them a perfect opportunity to escape while everybody is hold up inside buildings. Maybe their only choice for escaping the city is via hot air balloon since the gates are all shut tight and the sewers are flooded. The players would have to make a mad dash through the city, traveling between close buildings by hopping from one window to another or having to cross the street by climbing over it on a clothes line so as to avoid the raging flood below, all while trying to clamber on to a loose hot air balloon that is flying low to the rooftops and weaving in between buildings as the wind carries it through the city.
I love the concept here, and I think you do a good job of illustrating how different weather doesn't necessarily have an associated emotion, but it creates a certain vibe. How the players & characters relate to that vibe depends on their personalities and circumstances. Rain, rather than being sad, is more about grit and realism. Nobody has pretty hair in the rain, and all your clothes get dingy, but rain also washes away. What's the common thread? Rain reveals people, places, and events for what they really are. It can be used narratively to build a "shit just got real" vibe, which fits many different contexts and story beats. Being Canadian, I'm well versed with snow storms, and they are eerily quiet (snow literally muffles sound travelling through the air). They obscure, but they also provide the opportunity to focus. A snowstorm removes the background from the world, visually, audibly, and emotionally. That's why - as your examples illustrated - the revelations that come from journeying through the snow is what you see coming OUT of the white haze before you. You find the answer by literally finding the answer giver.
I'm definitely going to think about what other weather types represent on this more universal scale. When I think heat, I think of how oppressive it can feel, almost suffocating. Dry might be... friction? I don't know, but I'm excited to find out.
And with that, I think the TH-cam algorithm is sufficiently fed.
it feels like you could even put a volcano as a type of weather with this sort of description tied to it
One thing I remember myself doing is as I kept track of the current day in regards to the party is holding back the first winter snowfall until a very important moment. Up until that point, it was entirely set in autumn as the party did their work, but I was planning on them hitting rock bottom after a specific scene, and only then would I officially kick off winter in world. That scene never came. I originally was planning on a big betrayal to happen to the party and they had abandon their home, stepping out into the elements with an important child in tow as the first snowflakes of winter fall around them, with them unsure of their coming fate. Instead the person who betrayed them offered them an ultimatum to work under him. They took it, but I still made sure to accentuate the coming winter, as they were now essentially prisoners.
I include weather events on my random encounter charts. Otherwise, assume partly cloudy with a chance of non-mechanics effecting precipitation based on the season.
First, I'm so sorry your audio didn't record.
Secondly, wow. You put a lot of work into collecting and editing in clips. Nicely done.
Thirdly, I like using weather to spur dislike or distrust with NPCs. If it's hot and everyone is just feeling limp and wilted, why is that prissy fop not sweating? How is his collar still sharply starched? Why is there no sweat on his brow? etc. Showing that certain people are not under the sway of universal forces like weather can be quite a flag to players.
Now, I did not expect to see the Hyppocrates/Galen humoral theory in a video about weather in DnD, but I must say i am very pleased
I just want to bring up our West Marches style campaign where weather became super important. So someone pissed off a dryad and she started reanimating corpses with vines and stuff.
So after a month of dealing with this one of our magic users being sick of stuff had seen we where in a drought for the last 2 weeks and lit fire to the dryad's entire forest.
peace was never an option
Interesting ideas mentioned in this video.
HOWEVER, don't treat Thunderstorms only as dramatic/negative.
In real life I actually enjoy going out in Thunderstorms & feeling that power of nature! Also, there are other individuals out there such as "Storm Chasers" who enjoy intense weather/storms.
Finally, my favorite season is Winter & I love Snow and Blizzards so much!
That Kingsmill evocative flourish when the four moods tracked to the four humors in medieval medicine
I like rain and storms, I find them comforting. Unless the weather service really sends me a warning, I will usually go out for a walk even during medium thunderstorms. It's like I can't help myself.
I love when it's cloudy and dark and very windy but not raining yet. I think that's a great atmosphere for a dramatic fight, especially if you have the skies open up (as they say) at the moment of highest tension, like the boss entering the 2nd phase.
9:55 there are a few Superman stories that use natural disasters as the conflict. On a related note, any good Superman story uses some kind of problem that Superman’s powers can’t solve. In Superman All-Stars, for example, he’s dying of a disease and there’s nothing he can do to extend his life, so the heart of the story is Superman trying to make his remaining time count and making peace with his coming end. In one story (I forget which story), Superman tries to solve world hunger but finds that his powers don’t accomplish much so he looks to get people to work together against world hunger. If a Superman story gives him a problem his powers can properly address, it’s not a very good Superman story
Ten points for the Pirates of Penzance clip! I was obsessed with that VHS as a wee lad
Did you watch it orphan?
Yes! This is content I don't just want, I NEED. Frequently chide myself for neglecting to implement weather in any meaningful way in my sessions. Favourite weather... gotta be a thunderstorm/downpour. Like you said, rain is really versatile. But there's something about a climactic showdown during a thunderstorm that just gets me right in the chills.
Can I also just say, loving your shout-outs. Black Books? Much respect.
I love and definitely appreciate the Australian centric weather categories. So True!
Australians: so what even is this snow thing? Sounds fake.
Blizzards are really cool. They can lead to those closed off isolated moments like in the Thing, and the Shining. The terrain looks the same in any direction. And you really can't do a dang thing until the blizzard passes.
This was a great video.
Yeah, or the closed room murder mystery.
I'm planning a horror-ish campaign that's literally inside a cloud (well, a network of clouds), so those weather effects will feel very different from how they'd be experienced on the surface. Your video really helped give me inspiration to more creatively figure out how to use weather!
"CONTINUE FINE I HOPE IT MAY AND YET IT RAINED JUST YESTERDAY "
I like how Van Richten's Guide Ravenloft used the various Dark Lords' control of the mist to play into the narrative and gave it almost a character of its own. Also Tasha's gave good ways to use spell effects as environmental hazards.
Weather is also great for signalling a shift in genre. Fog and rain for gothic horror, sun and drought for western, etc. While not tied to a specific genre, blizzards are also great for creating a feeling of isolation, or to set up a bottle episode.
My favorite weather is gray sky, chilly winds. A rarity here in Brazil, because you usually get a drizzle with it and that part I don't like as much. Here, have your comment and like!
Idk why but I think this is one of my favorite D&D videos you've done. Really enjoy this one, and definitely going to use these ideas!
I've started using weather in my Curse of Strahd campaigns because I decided it was a great way to convey Strahd's mood. When he throws a tantrum for example, the weather becomes tempestuous. When he's feeling particularly upset and melodramatic, it rains blood. When he's in a cold furry, it's very icy.
It's made me want to expand how I use weather because I'd previously only used it to occasionally set the mood.
Very informative, and will definitely keep that in mind in my upcoming games. I had a storm once, caused by an evil artefact, but only after the players managed to destroy it did I realize that I hardly used it other than mentioning the fact that there was a storm. Now, my players will have a blast next storm. Pun intended, I guess. Thanks for sharing, Dael!
Another great example of the use of hot weather to show tension is Do The Right Thing.
An autumnal windstorm that stir fallen leaves. The leaves themselves become a "swarm" type of encounter.
10:05 one of the best encounters I ever ran (as expressed by the players) was when a volcano several miles away erupted and the party had to evacuate burning buildings in a town they were in. Every turn or so, I would place tokens on various buildings to represent pyroclasts landing and setting a blaze.
Well, one house they got to had a chunk of burning sulfur on it, and an old lady inside screaming for help, but the way it was drawn on the map left the door unobstructed. One player pointed this out, and I didn't have an answer, but another player stepped in with a bit of improv and said "Granny, push, don't pull!" I was able to recover, "Oh thank you dearie, I've lived in this house for forty years and I still get that confused!"
I love Dael's approach to things. It's a totally different perspective to my own, which always gets me thinking. I often tend to forget mood in a lot of my D&D games. All too often my weather use tends to be more encounter design focused with things like "fog will make it so the PCs have to engage in close combat" kind of encounter. I've also done the "roll on a table" style, but this is a fresh idea that I don't think I've heard other DMs bring up.
Can't wait to ruin all of my player's picnics with thematically-appropriate weather :)
I *LOVE* a windy blustery day. It's so energizing, more effective than any caffeine. I empathize with Hyakinthos' dilemma.
I may or may not talk to the wind as "Zephrus, Darling."
Weird, when I think of blizzards in movies I think of isolation, claustrophobia, and silence. Like 'The Thing', 'Storm of the Century', '30 Days of Night', and 'No Exit'. Blizzards also really frell with light.
Dael coming in and dropping the four humours on us.
Can absolutely recommend The Eldritch Lorecast. Like, for one, it has Dael, but aside from that it has very quickly become my favourite DnD podcast. Ghostfire Gaming is killing it.
I like the mix between mood and Almanac. When it mood you just do what right for the important scene and describe the weathers effect more.
I'm sorry but I loled when you called a the tornado in Wizard of Oz a hurricane
When I ran Tomb of Annihilation I used some of the alternative weather rules provided. I caught my party in a tropical storm that made a some what bland encounter more exciting and challenging. Fighting zombies and skeletons in tight crypt corridors is a lot more tense when 80% of the party has a level of exhaustion from slogging through a torrential downpour to get to what they thought was safe cover.
I feel compelled to say how much I admire how well you used examples from so many movies and TV shows to illustrate your points. I personally recognized virtually all of them (a rare achievement for me) and as I think about where in their stories those clips came from, they do indeed illustrate exactly what moods you are pointing out. I am equally impressed with both your editing skills and your library of movies to pull from.
Dael! Put Matthew in a headlock and get a promise that there will be a DUSK BOOK 2 in the near future (3-6 months!). You guys made it incredible to watch a group lean in to "yes and" with world building as a group. Soooo good!
Once when I was in college I experienced a thundersnow. It had been damp and chilly, then a thick fog rolled in. You could maybe see 30 feet ahead. As my group of friends started walking to lunch it began to snow, in those big thick flakes that fall really slowly. All while there's this soft thunder but no lightening seen. When the bell tower rang at the top of the hour we all about jumped out of our skins. It was so creepy, I highly recommend using it around like a white dragon lair or something.
My favorite weather is raining E-mails to my grandma.
I always look forward to your intro anecdotes! So glad you’re back Dael!
A video worth saying twice 😉 Should have been in a blizzard because it was so revolutionary! lol. Another banger, Dael!
It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly a shot rang out, the maid screamed and a pirate ship appeared on the horizon.
I once found an _awesome_ weather "roll table." (On paper, at least. Never got to run it.)
It was a hex grid. Today's weather was marked on the grid. On a new day, roll for which direction, if any, today's weather moves. Each season had its own grid. I'm simplifying a lot here, but that's essentially it.
It would make for weather and weather patterns that "stuck around." Weather changes were usually gradual.
Looked super nice. Maybe I'll get to use it one day.
But as for how I see weather, I don't seem to get the same sort of weather moods that other people get. Or maybe everyone's just gaslighting me. Winter depression isn't a thing I get, for instance.
I can see rain being a _super_ nice tool for a feeling of isolation, possibly mixed with beauty. No one wants to walk in rain, right? And the stuff is loud and dampens the travel of voices. There's a reason it's such a common trope for the romantic couple to find themselves trapped together by rain.
Okay, on another note, imagine this: The hero's friend just died and there's nothing to fight. The hero falls to his knees on the dusty dry dirt road. He looks up to the sky and screams his heart out. The sun shines bright today.
That hex grid weather table sounds so neat for the simulation-ist approach
Thank you for helping me hammer out how I'll reveal the door to Salsvault in my current run of Frozen Sick. Snowstorm was already on the table, but the feeling of revelation of a supernatural nature will throw them for a loop when it's a half-face/half-skull door they come... well, face to face with.
Blizzard makes me think of John Carpenter's 'The Thing' and Tarantino's 'Hateful Eight.' Building tension and isolation as the weather gets worse.
Dael, you're killing it again! Hitting both the narrative/dramatic element and the mechanics of weather in one perfect video. So happy to see this, thank you!
I was thinking about this for my home game, and was wondering what your vague and evocative take on it would be. TRUE NAMES. They are basically ignored by modern dnd, but are a super cool concept - getting to know the name of this super powerful, creature and having some level of power over it.
One thought that comes to mind from this video, I think this would be an interesting tool to test the characters on a moral level during travel. The idea of the party moving from City A to City B for some main quest reason, and you build up a progressively worsening storm over their week of travel until on the second last day of their trip, they're passing through a town that's been flooded and is in need of help, it seems like an interesting way to present a narrative challenge during a journey that could come back with future rewards, or perhaps lead to reflect badly on the heroes who circumvented the town rather then investigating to see if their help could've been needed.
Off the top of my head, probably a much more interesting idea in there somewhere if you cultivated this seed for awhile!
So here I am listening to another great take by Dael. And then my partner walks by and points something out that I have not thought about- the channel name MonarchsFactory comes from her surname. Mind slightly blown.
Also great video on weather.
Great video, as per usual!
Almanac-wielding simulationist here, but I love to then use the weather as a springboard for my creativity, and I'm certainly not averse to switching to DM fiat to provide dramatic weather when needed
One thing I really like, for immersion, is to let people know what the weather *feels* like while they travel, when the crawl out of their bedrolls, while they sit around the fire, and while they try to accomplish tasks (food prep, fording water, tracking, searching)
Very interesting take on weather as dramatic tool. I always knew about the whole Pathetic Fallacy thing, but never thought about it more than "storm is angry"
A lot of great ideas here! Thank you! It's not that I haven't used weather before, though... One of the "encounters" I run when the PCs are at sea is a raging thunderstorm that becomes a skill challenge.
Blizzards have a use of isolating people temporarily, which is useful for horror in that it means there’s no way to safety until the storm passes. See also: The Shining
The "dancing in the rain" idea still seems to me like the rain is being used as an oppressive force on the characters, it's just that their mood is so elevated that not even the rain can bring them down!
For the whole weather as narrative element, this is slightly different for every person, a early childhood of my mom's constantly listening to dancing in the rain and dancing to it lead me to associate light rain with glee and exuberance. And I associate heavier rains more with mystery, secrecy and protection for reasons I don't even know.
Love this!! Great ideas!
Snow is magical because we're slowly cooking our planet, so we recognize how rare and "against-all-odds" it truly is.
I kind of like using temperate autumnal weather in my games, like a frost hits and constitution checks to stay warm. Cold rain does similar, but also makes it harder to start a fire. Snowy conditions means tracks, which means a chase is easier for the pursuers than the pursued.
It's a terrible day for rain...
Current location is a red dragons 'lair' which has been overtaken by a white Dragon. The party teleport to the top of the Volcano, which has a stairway cut into it on the inside, the ways in.
There's a light drifting of snow, which means the stairs are slippery and the magical frost from the white Dragon is causing most to lower the visibility.
Outstanding vid Dael! I didn't know I needed it until I watched it 😁
Dael "International Incident" Kingsmill
I used to waste a lot of time and mental effort to track weather with various complicated systems, then I realized most of the time my weather had no real effect on the game (mostly sunny days). NOW I treat weather like any other encounter event. My weather (that will effect the story or the game mechanics) materializes from the sky the exact same way (random or by design) as my dragon attack would.
The weather encounter sounds fun! Reminds me of LotR as they are climbing the mountain and Saruman uses weather. It's an encounter, but still connected to the story.
You were talking about blizzards, and all I could think of was a) jonathan strange and mr Norrel, where 'arabella' goes walking, and b) The Neverending Story- the second gate.
Thanks, Dael! Your videos are always thought-provoking and useful!
ESGEE PIRATES OF PENZANCE!!! I audibly gasped, incredible reference.
Great references. Fun and informative.
Excellent as always Dale, Thank you. Weather and Climate (They are obviously different things) are an integral part of my world building and Encounter setting. 3 questions I will ask myself before I build and encounter- 1: Is it inside or outside (Exposed to the elements or protected from them) 2: Time of Day or night 3: What is the weather like, these 3 factors dramatically change the Encounter, and potentially how spells and actions in that encounter work.
Tons of great idea n this video. I was writing down ideas for campaigns as I watched. (The old almanac was a great idea) Glad I found your channel.
Wait, Arashii?! Yes please.
One of my favourite set ups that I never got to use, is the party is being hunted and a diviner or something has warned the town that a massive storm is coming in X days.
The players now get to choose where they are during this storm. Are they going to use it to their advantage in some way and attack one of their targets during the storm? Or are they going to cower and wait it out at home? Or leave town entirely?
Spoilers; waiting it out at home means the person chasing them uses the storm to isolate the party from any guards or support networks, and attacks. Forcing them to fight either in an enclosed, small, isolated area or a chaotic storm with winds so powerful that light-weight projectiles like arrows are thrown off course (disadvantage)
That feeling when you notice sound isn't recording... it hurts so bad... but this is an exceptional video and has given me an idea for a deep dive...
Nice and helpfull video!
I used weather in my sessions on multiple points and I realised, that I even unintentionally followed your advice of leading into extrem weather! But I never thought that much about it. Another fun thing to keep in mind for if it becomes a usefull tool!
Weather is such a cool thing because if you haven’t experienced different climates it’s hard to grasp. Like LA has this reputation of always being sunny and warm which it is but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have weather. They just trade rainstorms and snowstorms for earthquakes and wildfire season. And like earthquakes are always seen as cataclysmic but like sometimes they’re soft little rumbles that shake the fine China or whatever. But they also have the existential threat of “maybe this is just a foreshock of The Big One” and everyone just laughs their way through it. And then the wildfires will get so bad that the sun turns an orange red for all the ash and smoke in the air, and you’ll drive along a highway and just find flames lapping up at the edge of it. So a lot of the “exotic” weather is really commonplace to the locals and still awe inspiring which you can inverse also to make the weather familiar to you also seem more appreciably exotic and alien as well. Nature be powerful put respect on your druids folks!
You weathered that initial challenge with aplomb and grace, Kingsmill! I’m gonna use weather for a duel in the mud! In the middle of the village!